THE POLITICS OF HOPE

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, has written a brilliant tract for our times: in an age of moral and social dislocation, how can we recover a sense of belonging and spiritual values? He advances both a diagnosis or thesis and a cure or programme, the politics of hope, explaining how we have come to our current position and what we can do about it. He quotes an arresting sentence from Gertrude Himmelfarb to the effect that 'absolute liberty tends to corrupt absolutely', which initially comes as something of a shock but its force soon becomes apparent. Here Sacks comes to the nub of his diagnosis in drawing a distinction between liberal and libertarian notions of a free society. The libertarian view is that individuals should be left free to pursue their own choices, which implies a privatisation of morality. The liberal concern is how to create a society in which everyone can participate, and this implies a common consent on basic values agreed by families, communities and other institutions. It becomes clear that social and political institutions are predicated on moral qualities - of which more below.

Sacks sums up the distinction between the two approaches by saying that 'if libertarianism is the politics of interests, liberalism is the politics of involvement'. The first is atomistic and narrowly individualistic, while the second is participatory. These approaches correspond to radically different philosophies of government: the libertarians will seek a minimalist state while the liberals will tend towards more intervention and a maximalist view. However, both views share a minimalist view of morality whereby it is a purely private concern. Sacks questions this view root and branch, providing strong arguments for an alternative understanding, but he also shows us how we arrived at it in a historical sense. The three parts of the book consider the relationship between the social and the moral, the nature of a social covenant and his ideas for a good society.

Few readers will disagree that we have lost our moral bearings in the last fifty years. On the plus side, our tolerance has increased and we have successfully thrown off many totalitarian or authoritarian shackles. But on the minus side, pluralism has degenerated into relativism and the notion that anything goes – one view is every bit as good as another. As Sacks points out, this makes it impossible to make public judgements without being accused of moralising. In addition, the currency of public debate is all too often defined by autonomy and rights, without mention of corresponding social obligations and responsibilities. Institutions are expected to be value-free and neutral about lifestyles; they should enhance the role of choice without making judgements between choices. Sacks' answer to this is that it cannot be done: 'trying to create a society without socialisation is like trying to have communication without a language.' (p.38) Then he adds, 'freedom is a moral accomplishment' requiring strong families, cohesive institutions, habits of civility and a sense of fellow feeling. It also require virtues: 'self-control, decency, politeness, rational reflection and conversation, courage and persistence in the pursuit of ideals, the capacity to work with others, to win untriumphantly and to lose graciously, the ability to admire and sometimes to revere.' This is a crucial point and one that is further reinforced in the next chapter when Sacks analyses the fundamental concepts that underlie the family: loyalty, responsibility, authority, obedience, justice, compassion. Just as we are living off our ecological capital, so we are living off the moral capital accumulated by previous generations.

The second part begins with a historical overview, with Aristotle, Maimonides and Hobbes. The story that emerges is one of 'humanity as an aggregate of rational self-seeking individuals; of society as an arena of conflicting interests; and of the resolution of conflict by a central power given legitimacy by a social contract.' (p.61) Sacks contrasts this contract view with the covenant theme in Jewish history whereby 'relationship precedes identity'. He goes on to outline the liberal revolution of the uncoupling of political from civil society leading to the open society and institutionalised tolerance; the Victorian ethic of self-help and the emancipation movement carried into morality itself; and the development of individualism observed by de Tocqueville with the evolution of individual salvation to individual judgement. He notes the development of language with its divorce between facts and values, the way in which the Enlightenment privileges the universal when qualities are in fact rooted in particular situations. He shows the emergence of libertarianism in John Stuart Mill, whereby liberalism is applied to the moral and civil domain. Freedom becomes the protection of individual choice and 'morality is not a matter of virtue, dispositions prized within a given society as necessary to its well-being, but of value, freely adopted personal preference.' (p. 115) However, and this a key argument as Burke realised, some degree of self-discipline is a precondition to liberty.

In a chapter entitled (pace Freud) 'De-Civilisation and its Discontents', Sacks analyses how the libertarian revolution has undermined many virtues of character and broke a 'crucial set of connections: between action and consequence, virtue and reward, effort and achievement, outcome and self-restraint.' And, as he points out, 'rights, a legal concept, replaced duties, a moral concept'. This leads to the predominance of the contract model. Furthermore, he asks, 'if society could survive without religion, why not morality? If faith could be privatised, why not virtue?' But is this a step into the abyss? Sacks thinks so in analysing what he calls the 'fatal ambiguity'. The Enlightenment error, he argues, lies in the supposition that the whole of morality can be contained in the ideas of universality, autonomy and freedom from interference. The paradox is that the liberal society depends on the existence of non-liberal institutions. Sacks admits that religion trespassed into areas not its own – those of factual knowledge and political power – with resulting ignorance and persecution. In the same vein, liberalism, 'a great truth about coexistence in diversity', trespassed into morality, 'the great truth about living in trust' and it too brought harm in the form of broken families and social disintegration: 'extending beyond its scope, it threatened to destroy its own foundations'.

In the third part, Sacks asks if we can restore civility and build a good society. His answer is emphatically affirmative, but it requires our commitment and participation. It cannot happen from the top down, either through government regulation and still less through ecclesiastical fiat. A sign of hope is the growing emphasis on responsibilities to balance rights. Another is the enormous popularity of collections of stories illustrating fine human qualities: Chicken Soup for the Soul, Kitchen Table Wisdom and many others; also Stephen Covey's emphasis on character over technique in his Seven Habits series. Sacks covers education, the family, community and the common good. He defends education as the transmission of a tradition and uncompromisingly spells out the centrality of the family, asking if we are prepared to accept some limit on the pursuit of private interest for the sake of our children. He also reminds us that morality, like language, is taught: 'we develop languages because we seek communication. We develop moralities because we seek community.' (p.217)

Sacks rightly argues that, given the fact that both markets and states depend on virtues, we need a moral system that encompasses the market rather than allowing the market to dictate on its own terms of the survival of the fittest. The politics of hope locates responsibility within, as the Victorians realised. And he cites their experience as a precedent where the social fabric of trust was put together again by making character and duty central. This comes from the inner-directed personality, but Sacks seems unaware of the literature on cultural creatives, which reinforces his argument and shows the widespread emergence of a new social movement. He concludes: 'We can change the world if we change ourselves. Indeed that is the only way the world is changed, for politics ultimately works through people and our acceptance of responsibility. That is why morality is prior to politics, and why it remains the only secure base of freedom and dignity. Renewing society's resources of moral energy is the programme, urgent but achievable, of a new politics of hope.' (p.269) No serious thinker can afford to ignore the issues raised by Jonathan Sacks in this book and to ponder both the diagnosis he gives or the solutions he advances. It is a seminal and profoundly challenging work that invites us individually to develop virtues of character and to embrace our full humanity in community.